


orpheus, composing

by khlassique



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 04:16:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2296319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khlassique/pseuds/khlassique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"if you haunt me, i'll sing for you"</p><p>She dreams of how to kill Peter Hale, sometimes. It used to be more often, but then she started waking up standing over dead bodies, and she stopped dreaming until Allison was only there when she slept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> accompanying mixtape [here](http://8tracks.com/capetian/orpheus-composing)

The voices woke her up.  
  
 _Lydia. Lydia._  
  
One sounded like Allison, enough that her hand reached unconsciously across the covers while her eyes are still closed to feel if her friend is there, curled up after a night of studying and a bottle of sweet pink wine taken from the cellar. But the covers are flat and cool, and she remembered again because how could she ever forget, and the voices kept taunting, just outside the glass.  
  
 _Lydia._  
  
There was another time like this, with a voice outside her window. A nightmare, a wolf, red eyes and my, my, what big teeth you have, right at my throat, guiding my hand. My, my, how loud I can scream with no one to hear.  
  
She dreams of how to kill Peter Hale, sometimes. It used to be more often, but then she started waking up standing over dead bodies, and she stopped dreaming until Allison was only there when she slept.  
  
The funeral had been beautiful, a film scene. The sky was even appropriately overcast, closing in on the group of mourners, containing their grief. There were flowers everywhere, gifts from other hunter families, more alive than Allison would ever be again. Lydia looked at the cards and memorized every name with her lips drawn tight because one of them should have known about the Nematon, one of them should have come and helped. What had Allison said once- _we can’t do this alone, we’re only teenagers_ \- and yet it was the teenagers who surpassed the adults in all things in Beacon Hills.  
  
It shouldn’t hurt so much to have so much love still. Maybe she will be dying and she will not be able to scream for herself but she will remember Allison, so she will smile because _I am coming_.  
  
 _Lydia. Lydia. Ly-di-a._  
  
She blinked heavily, forcing herself to get out of bed.  
  
There was no one at the window, but the voices called. A thread was tugged, pulling her away, so far away, and she let herself be pulled along, out of the house and into the woods, bare feet across frosted leaves. Time slipped away easily that way, the path not mattering. All that mattered was the thread.  
  
A part of her wanted to rebel, to cut the thread and to run. This was not a destiny, this being led to slaughter. As if Lydia could ever rebel against her own nature, as if this was not as much a part of her as the nervous system. That could at least be laid out, studied, stark against an examining table, but her powers? Intangible, understanding slipping through her fingers like sand. There wasn’t a Fields Medal for the supernatural, no equation to make this predictable.  
  
The moon was on the cusp of full, light dappling the forest floor. Tomorrow night would be for the wolves; it was easier for weres to shift then, and Scott would take Malia out, with Derek joining sometimes. They ran to let the beast help them forget for a little while. At least they could forget, an envious trait.  
  
Lydia could see the moon and her breath curling thick like smoke, but it was not until she stumbled and fell palms first onto the rough cut trunk that she knew where the thread had taken her.  
  
The Nematon thrummed with energy, sending a pleasant warming hum underneath her skin.  
  
It was only when she looked up that she saw the other women standing on the other side of the trunk, impassive. Three of them, standing in a line and all in dark clothing. One was hooded.  
  
Lydia sank to her knees, palms still flat, protected only by the trunk. There was a curious absence of fear; instead, the pleasant thrum grew stronger until she felt like she would burst. Welcome home.  
  
“I don’t want to die now.” A statement; it could be hard to tell who would try to kill or aid the pack in these woods, and Lydia didn’t have fangs to protect herself. She wished Scott was with her. The center woman grinned and shook her head. Her hair was braided tightly, skin dark, a fur scarf the color of Lydia’s hair wrapped round her throat.  
  
“Oh no, Lydia. You’re going to live. We’ve made sure of that.”  
  
“You’ve made _sure_?”  
  
“A lot of girls don’t wander the woods for two days and live.”  
  
With the tip of her tongue pressed to the back of her teeth, Lydia let out a hiss of air, anger mixing with this inexplicable feeling of homecoming in her bones. She let herself be grounded by that. “Who are you and how long have you been watching me?”  
  
“We’re like you. Banshees, wailing women, harbingers, doomsayers. Many names, here in the shadows since your powers woke.”  
  
“And you did not think that you could help me? My friends? The bodies I’ve woken up over? I thought I was _insane_.”  
  
The center woman’s fur scarf moved, flowing around her neck and down her arm to leap onto the Nematon to Lydia. It was not a scarf at all, but a weasel, and it sniffed the back of her fingers before running back to its mistress. The woman smiled down at her pet as it perched on her forearm.  
  
“It is not the Council’s duty to interfere in the games of other creatures. That was for you alone, though you have proven yourself ready to begin formal instruction.”  
  
The pleasant thrumming stopped; Lydia’s shoulders stayed stiff, and her voice harsh, though her fingers curled into her palms.  
  
“I’ve already figured out the screaming thing, no thanks to your council.”  
  
Shivering a moment, the weasel skittered up the woman’s arm and atop her left shoulder, worrying at the earlobe with a rub of its head.  
  
“Calm, Aednat.” But the animal did not obey, worrying still. “There is more to us than keening. That’s only a part of our magic.”  
  
“Oh, I have _magic_ now, too?” Lydia pushed herself up, swaying a moment as she stood barefoot in her boxer shorts and oversized shirt, hair wild around her head. “Am I an heir to some throne now, a secret queen? Have you come to tell me that I need to slay a dragon, too?” Once Lydia had used that tone on a bothersome freshman; the girl had burst into tears immediately. Lydia had not been sorry then and she was not sorry now.  
  
The woman standing to the right of center stepped forward, silver hair braided thick over one shoulder and skin almost translucent, creased softly at the edges of her eyes. “What you just felt from the Nematon is magic. It is not about dragons or fae, it is about being a conduit between the realm of life and death. Magic is pure life and the manipulation of it. We are connected to the earth, and all that has gone below it.”  
  
Aednat went back to Lydia, twining round her legs and chittering, annoyed. A part of Lydia at was caught by  _conduit_ , hopeful and small, though she did not allow herself to become entirely complacent.  
  
“Do you mean I can learn to talk to the dead?”  
  
The center woman tilted her head. “No. Yes.” Her lips pressed together, not unkindly. “My familiar is taken with you, though you have a part belonging to a wolf now. We are usually wary of shifting things; death shadows them too closely.”  
  
“Says the banshee.”  
  
The last woman, who stood to the left of the trio, stepped forward now and broke her silence, face still shadowed by the cloak, hands tucked underneath. “This is your legacy, young one. Your grandmother should have been instructing you, as in accordance with our law, but in some cases the lineage is broken too soon. Did she not leave you any letters?”  
  
“The insane asylum didn’t give back her belongings.” Though the words were harsh with bitterness, none of the women reacted, and Lydia drew her lip up to flash sharp teeth. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? Teach me.”  
  
A demand from a girl who gave them with regularity, unflinching as the chill seeped into her bones.


	2. Chapter 2

And so it was that Lydia Martin came into her education as banshee, with the same whirlwind manicured fury that swept everything else in her path up. Stiles tried to peek underneath the covers of her new books and she smacked his hand away each time, satiating curiosity by sometimes reading selections while the pack lazed at the lake house, winter light cutting through leaf-stripped branches into warm patterns on the floor. Scott would be on the couch, fingers grazing Kira’s head as she leaned against him, listening. He would always listen because that’s just who Scott was, though Lydia never forgot when he called her insane.

 

The three witch women would teach her on their own schedule; a jacket and pair of boots found a new home by the end of her bed (Allison, cajoling- “ _Come on, Lydia, these would look so good with that dress you have_ -”). These witches had no names, at least that they would tell her, and the hooded one never showed her face, gesturing only from underneath her cloak. Aednat rarely kept still for more than a moment, sometimes returning with a catch, little limp legs dangling.

 

Banshee magic required her voice, a skill Lydia had not used since middle school choir beyond the safe confines of her car. This was for the better; she tried to imagine finding out that the soprano notes were actually a way to summon from beyond in front of an auditorium. It would probably sign a fast track pass to Eichen House. She had come close enough to that already.

 

Still, Lydia sang. The woods were dark, her orchestra the snap of twigs under the animal feet and the wind in leaves, her audience a silent trio and a chittering weasel. Flashes of memory- her grandmother’s laugh-   _my little Ariel_ \- mountain ash underneath her fingers and the sharp smell of lake rot- then- Allison laughing-   _my best friend_ \-  iron underneath her fingers and the bitter tang of blood. It was a bit too on point, her grandmother’s nickname. She gave her voice to the woods and to the witches and wanted only legs to find the one she loved.

 

\---

 

It took three attempts until Lydia finally crossed over. The first two failures left her curled upon the rough-hewn nematon. The center woman, with her bright smile and rare signs of sentimentality, held out a handkerchief. There was embroidery along the edges that dragged at thin skin, but she did not care to see what it was. There what was- the embroidery, the failure- and that which was not- a doorway, a friend.

 

“What did I do wrong?”

 

The center woman tilted her head, like a cat pondering how to pounce. “Does it matter that we should make you focus on that which you failed to do, little wolf-thing? We will try again.”

 

Two weeks later.

 

Again, the failure. Again, the embroidery. She had bit her tongue in the middle of a note, which left streaks across the cloth.

 

Stiles asked her if she was sleeping at all and attempted to follow up with another question, but was stopped short by the quick cut of her eyes. She did not want to tell him because then he would try to tell her that this was foolish and r _eversing death was so stupid, Lydia, my god, you know what happens when someone wants to play with the supernatural here!_

 

_Yes, and_. The arch of her brow, lifted up.

 

He of all people should know better than to tell Lydia Martin “no” like she didn’t know the consequences. Like it wasn’t his body as host that led her to this. She should call him selfish, but what was this enterprise if not that?

 

Two weeks after that, success.

 

Allison had described her journey into the other place as heavy, like she had woken up from an uncomfortable dream about drowning into bright white lights; she had never said if she remembered the drowning itself, would admit to nothing even after waking up with a deep gasp and wet cheeks. Lydia had to dance the circle and sing the lamentation, bare feet leaving sacrificial stains upon the nematon, waiting for the elements to align just right. Oh, this magic made sure she felt every splinter in her foot because banshee magic was as old as stone and persistent as suffering.

 

There are books and there are myths, and then there is slipping into liminal space with a last lingering note.

 

_Oh_ , she thought.

 

Lydia stood in an empty windowless hall, carved out of stone with a packed dirt floor. Grit from the floor dug into the scrapes and cuts on her feet. Murmurs drifted up from the open doorway in front of her, unintelligible, but Lydia refrained from investigating, instead taking a satchel and small knife from her pocket.

 

From each witch, there was a different instruction. _Stay outside their door and announce yourself with herbs and blood._ The small pile of herbs was snapped up from her cut palm by an unfelt breeze, carried to the doorway in a swirling rope.

 

As the scent of sage and bitter herbs and copper filled the air, Lydia remembered only Allison’s smile. _Think on what you wish to bring back._

 

With her back now turned to the door, the hall echoed the heavy beating of her heart, heightened from fear and the sharp pains in her feet. _Do not look back until you are back to our own realm. Pain is focus._

 

“Lydia?” The last time she had heard her name like that, Allison had woken up from a nap, voice small and rough from disuse.

 

Not even Lydia’s heart dared beat in the moment she struggled to breathe again.

 

“Allison,” she said with difficulty, every instinct screaming at her to turn despite the rules set so long ago.

 

“Why are you here?” There was the crunch of boot soles over dirt. One, two, three, pause, a breath. “Why won’t you look at me?” The steps quickened, coming around her left side,  and Lydia turned her back with a stumble, the movement chilling wet tracks on her cheeks. She hadn’t noticed there was anything to chill. “Why won’t you look at me? Lydia?”

 

“I can’t, or you’ll go.” Lydia tried to remember how to regain composure. She had done it plenty of times before, but Allison sounded so much younger than she remembered. “Just follow me back home.”

 

“Why-”

 

“Just follow me. _Please_. Allison. Come back with me. I can’t explain now.” For a magic that required her voice, Lydia’s own was rough with grief and tenuous joy. _Here is your love, but do not look. Here is what you came for. Resist. Sing._

“I’ll follow you. Just lead the way. Oh, Lydia.” Her name, fading into a sigh. “It’s been so cold here. But I could hear you.”

 

Now there was a path to walk because magic would not let things be balanced in that way. Oh, the scale was balanced- her blood for passage, eight months of her life for the eight months Allison had spent there- but now the journey began.

 

The crone’s voice, raspy in memory. _“Wolf-claimed, wolf-bit, wolf-cursed, Death knows you as it knows us and Death is not fair.”_

_Lydia shakes her hair back, curls a halo, youthful and impertinent in the face of that magic which ruled her. “But this is what I want.”_

_The crone dipped her head in acknowledgement, hood still hiding her features. “So it is. Keep this warning close to you- do not trust your heart to tell you when it is safe. ”_

For all that Lydia slipped into this place, she would have to hike out of it so as to stretch the temptation out. Allison’s gaze prickled the back of Lydia’s neck, a hyperawareness setting her body alight, her song in a pitch otherwise unreachable.

 

Her song was both a lamentation and a victory march, a song in which Allison would know that this is the path, that this was why she could not look, that this was why there was blood upon the ground where she stepped.

  
  


_Oh, follow, follow._

Allison did.

 

And so it was that they struggled together through narrow twisting tunnels of stone, the girl with the banshee blood and the heir to the huntress, neither old enough to receive their role with grace.

 

And so it was that Lydia Martin turned a moment too soon because she forgot to ignore her heart when it was so close, her hand reaching out to brush Allison Argent’s hair in moonlight and yet still catching only a brush of soft curl between her fingers.

 

And so it was that she has always known that this was the story, that this was how the venture would end.

 

And so it was that this was all she was left with, the feeling of it all slipping softly, quickly away for ever and ever and ever, of forest debris underneath her scraped knees and palms, of screaming. Of all of this, unchanging.

 

And so it was that Lydia Martin is left with nothing of Allison but the song she had sung to keep her kindly throughout the years and the memory of hair through fingertips.

  
And so it was that she passed her life in the same way that Orpheus had lingered with his lyre, composing for his love, always until death; there was a chorus of voices at the edge of her mind, amongst them a fading memory, and Lydia sang to bring her home. 


End file.
